Recent advances in the food art have resulted in the preparation of extruded dough products which have desirable functionality and certain organoleptic characteristics such as texture. However, these products lack sufficient flavor due to the short time, high temperatures, and pressure drop of the extrusion process. Traditionally, starch-based food products were more flavorful because the longer processing times employed allowed the flavor precursors to develop through such steps as cooking, tempering, baking, and toasting. These traditional methods of processing took several hours while today's modern extruder can produce similar products in under one minute.
Many attempts have been made to produce flavorants, the addition of which would augment the deficient flavor profiles of extruded food products. The inventions resulting from these attempts seem to rely upon malt as a primary constituent. Malt, especially that obtained from barley, is known as an important carrier of flavorable grain and cereal flavors. U.S. Pat. No. 3,615,697 issued to Hollenbeck specifically discloses a process by which whey is added to Lactobacillus bacteria and malt, and the mixture is fermented to form a heat-labile, volatile food flavorant. This flavorant, while combining the desirable malt flavor with the sour taste of lactic acid and the related fermented flavors, would not be sufficiently stable to adequately withstand the rigorous conditions of the extruder. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,663,168 and 4,752,482, issued to Fulger and Lou disclose processes by which malt is fermented by yeast to form a heat-stable, low volatile food flavorant which attempts to duplicate the typical cooked grain flavors. However, upon extrusion, these flavorants do not produce as strong, a cooked-grain flavor as compared to the product produced by this invention.